TORONTO – From a distance Gaetano Gagliano was a perfect representative of Toronto’s Catholic establishment. He was a rich man whose business empire employs more than 1,300.

OTTAWA – In 1976, in preparation for his final vows to become an Oblate priest, Fr. Louis Lougen asked God for “the grace to be a missionary.”

We are often rudely awakened to our insufficient response to the voice of need.

Churches and mosques have been centres of “searing” human rights abuses in South Sudan, where a civil war has been raging since 2013, according to a United Nations report.

Archbishop Paul-André Durocher loves women. He wants to hear their voices, take their advice and see them active in the Church.

TORONTO - For Manhal Al-Khsom, his wife and his three daughters, prayers for Christian unity are not prayers for some ideal Church of the future, but prayers for his family, his friends and for everything he left behind when he came to Canada last April.

The Anglican Communion voted to censure its American branch, the Episcopal Church, during a meeting in Canterbury, England, called to reflect on the future of the communion.

Newfoundland’s oldest standing wooden church has never had electricity but being unable to power-up a computer hasn’t deterred supporters from taking an ambitious fundraising campaign online.

The strength of Catholic education is founded on an alliance between families, parishes and schools which work together towards a shared objective. Together they comprise the domestic church.

VATICAN CITY - If Pope Francis sees the Church as a field hospital after battle, then his annual Christmas address to the Roman Curia often looks like the triage tent, with him holding the charts.

When Archbishop Paul-André Durocher raised the question of ordaining female deacons during the first full day of the Synod on Family, he stepped into one of the most contentious and complex struggles in the Church — full participation of women in all aspects of their faith life, their Church.

VATICAN CITY - Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput said the Synod on the family must recognize global diversity while staying true to Church doctrine.

Pope Francis’ first U.S. visit gave his already-high favourability ratings only a modest bounce with most Americans — and no bounce at all among Catholics.

The world Synod of Bishops on the family is not a parliament where participants will negotiate or lobby, Pope Francis said, but it must be a place of prayer where bishops speak with courage and open themselves to “God who always surprises us.”

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA - The Catholic Church is more African than most Canadians realize. We pay no attention to the early African popes — Gelasius I (492 to 496), Miltiades (311 to 314) and Victor I (189 to 199). We gloss over the African origins of some of the most significant writers and thinkers of early Christianity, including the evangelist Mark, author of the oldest Gospel in the canon, and theologians Tertullian, Origen and St. Augustine of Hippo.